Description and History
A particularly geeky rock band from Denmark, who play old Commodore 64 game tunes on "normal" instruments. They have played live gigs at demo parties, on Danish national radio broadcast, and have one studio-recorded album, "Loading Ready Run". Press Play On Tape started playing in 1999; the members knew each other from the demo scene group Hybris/NEMESIS, of which they are all members (most of them serving as graphic artists and coders rather than musicians, though). The band plays on the feelings of nostalgia that run rampant in the demo scene -- indeed, many demo scene parties still include Commodore 64 demo, graphics and music competitions.
Their stage show includes C64 screenshots on a big-screen projector, and videos of old Commodore advertisements proudly boasting the C64's monstrous amounts of RAM -- its whopping 64 kilobytes was more than twice of what its competitors had! My personal favourite PPOT songs are Monty On The Run and Auf Wiedersehen Monty, both of which are old Rob Hubbard themes from the games of the same names (I seem to remember loading up those games and putting them on pause to hear the music through my C64's mighty 3-voice semi-analog SID synthesizer when I was a kid. Don't tell anyone). Possibly their greatest hit is their version of the theme from Commando, the strange sawtooth wave rhythm of the original has mutated into a very funky slap bass rhythm.
They allegedly managed to impress Rob Hubbard himself when he first heard recordings of some of his old compositions played live, 15 years later. This must have been a great honour for the band, since they publicly proclaim Mr. Hubbard to be one of their heroes. Lately they have taken to including Amiga themes into their repertoire as well -- or rather an Amiga theme: The song from the memorable SCUMM adventure Monkey Island.
Members
- Jesper "dunkel" Holm Olsen (lead and rhythm guitars)
- Martin "myth" Koch (lead and rhythm guitars)
- Theo "beyond" Engell-Nielsen (keyboards)
- André "tischer" Tischer Poulsen (keyboards)
- Søren "trauma" Trautner Madsen (electronic drums)
- Uffe "zonk" Friis Lichtenberg (bass)
Discography
References
- http://www.pressplayontape.com (includes some MP3s)
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